Eight years

 

This is how the anniversary celebration goes after eight years and going-on-three children:

Saturday morning as we prepare for L's recital, N says: "Do you want to go out for our anniversary tonight?"

I say: "Really? I guess it is our anniversary this week. What do you have in mind?"

N: "Like A and N will watch the kids for us and we can go out to dinner."

I: "Really? Of course!"

Six hours later, N and I are dressed in the kind of clothes that prompt people to say: "Wow! You look nice," and we're heading up the freeway with PJs and stuffed animals. C and L are excited to greet an enthusiastic tio and tia waiting at their house with plans for fried shrimp and squeaky green soy beans for dinner, with chocolate milk and pink lemonade to sip on the side. L even gets to help make dinner.

N and I depart for a fantastic dinner at a restaurant we could never fully enjoy as a family. We order ridiculously adult foods like tuna tar-tar and beet salad with goat cheese and horseradish vinaigrette.

After dinner we drive home to spend the first night ever in our house without children. It is eerily quiet and divine. We walk to the beach after nightfall underneath a starry sky--also a rare treasure.

We sleep in until 7:30 a.m., then drive to La Jolla for breakfast and a leisurely stroll through town. We sip organic breakfast blend coffee outside under white canvas umbrellas and wait for a mediterranean omlette and a belgian waffle with smokey bacon on the side. I eat so much I feel my stomach stretching nearly beyond its limits as New Baby nestles silently underneath, taking in all of that breakfast goodness I've devoured. N and I talk about food, movies, trips we'll take someday and maybe a little about how much we love those children of ours. We feel rested, reconnected to each other and totally refreshed. And somehow, though we love this time alone together, we want nothing more than to scoop up our little boy and girl and hear all about their time away from us.

When we arrive to take L and C home, they've had a wonderful time and have kept A and N on their best parenting game with night-time wakings and potty-training mishaps. There's a special place in heaven for good aunties and uncles, I think.

L and C are exhausted and cranky and immediately slip into slumber on the drive home. But it's all worth it--just for N and I to feel a little glimmer of what we used to be, eight years ago, when it was just the two of us and a set of big dreams for our future. It's nice to be reminded of those days because no matter how great that time seems to us now, we wouldn't trade what we had then for what we have now--not for anything.